Site Search Navigation

Site Navigation

Site Mobile Navigation

Shooting at Laws in Ads (Literally)

By Lawrence Downes June 8, 2012 2:38 pmJune 8, 2012 2:38 pm

Ron Gould, an Arizona state senator running for Congress, really, really doesn’t want government to mess with anybody’s health care. I noted that in a post yesterday, linking to a campaign ad that shows him blasting President Obama’s health-care reform, the Affordable Care Act, with a pump-action shotgun.

He doesn’t actually hunt it down to kill it. It gets launched into the air in front of him, like a big, 900-page clay pigeon. He then blows it to bits. He is, after all, “a straight shooter.”

I think Mr. Gould liked my post, because he immediately used it in a fund-raising appeal. “I won’t back down from the liberals at the New York Times editorial page,” he says, “just like I won’t back down from the liberals in Washington who want to keep raising the debt limit to pay for their endless cycle of spending that will do nothing more than ruin the economic prosperity of our country.”
Mr. Gould was the sponsor of a bill in the state Legislature to nullify the Affordable Care Act in Arizona. It declares that the act and a companion reconciliation measure “are not authorized by the Constitution of the United States and violate its true meaning and intent as given by the founders and ratifiers and are declared to be invalid in this state, shall not be recognized by this state, are specifically rejected by this state and are considered void and of no effect in this state.”

That’s making your views pretty clear.

I have not yet met Mr. Gould, but if I do, I’d like to ask him if he really means what he says about government-run health care. Since there is no government-run health care in Mr. Obama’s plan, do you want to (O.K., figuratively) shoot up Medicare and Medicaid, and Veterans Affairs medical centers and clinics, and military hospitals? Aren’t there senior citizens in Phoenix and Glendale who depend on government health care for their prescription drugs? Where should our troops go for care after they get shot or blown up? Halliburton? Should we bill them for their bandages and artificial limbs? And if you take your seat in Congress, are you not going to sign up for the members’ health plan? I hear it’s a good one.

I should note that Mr. Gould is not the first or only candidate to shoot a law in a political ad. In 2010 a Democrat, Joe Manchin, used a scope-mounted rifle to assassinate a cap-and-trade bill. He is now the junior senator from West Virginia.

In an ad from Herman Cain’s Cain Solutions, a man and a young girl do a terrible thing to a rabbit to make a point about the burden placed on small businesses by the tax code.